CHAPTER 437: ARC 6, CHAPTER 53: SLIP THROUGH THE THORNS

As much as the thorns scraped or stabbed, it could not pierce the red metal plates of one man’s armour. Scratches and cuts marked the armour for sure, however with only his head at risk, Ben could cover his face and neck in time.

His gauntlets clanked before the vines could strike, "Ignitia!" a ball of scarlet flame burst as he clashed his wrists. The vines shrivelled and hissed as all moisture seared away, leaving charred and black ends.

His swords, gauntlets and caught on fire of scarlet hue, including the armour that formed a collar around his lower neck. "Clang!" He fell with both swords into the ground and one knee bent.

He stood up and flourished the twin swords in the direction of the briars that held everyone else up against the wall. "Flamethrower!" "FLWOOSH!"

Two scarlet-red torrents of flame streamed through the vines and burnt them by the limbs, dropping everyone onto the floor in an instant, while Ben noticed that the thorns had pierced their enchanted attire.

He looked down at his own armour and traced an armoured finger over the scratch marks. Ben faced the Briar Prince—raised one sword at the new god and the other he lifted onto his shoulder, "You’re pretty good, your magic’s crazy strong.

But I got the type advantage my guy, fire beats plant and by my calculations," he twisted his swords around, adding flames to roil around and catch onto them, "The Scorching Inferno’s got you beat," he said all in a voice much lower than usual.

"Hell yeah!" Clyde cheered while freeing his twin from the briars.

With a quick slash of her watery claws, Hotaru cut the thorns around her and dispelled it quickly, "Enough posing, we’re losing magic," she warned and helped Tiffany while Asobi freed herself with strokes of light.

"DFT! SHFFF! BUFF!"

Cubic chunks of the floor and walls sank into the stone, separating and swallowing each of them up into a little pocket of their own.

Ben and Clyde fell into pits, while Hotaru, Asobi and Colwyn were in spaces along the wall and Tiffany was shifted higher up through a gap in the ceiling. The briars shot up thorned vines to invade their spaces.

"AHHHHH!" Ripples of Tiffany’s scream paralyzed the vines that shot at her. Cracks formed in the bricks and stone, till her one eye fell on the ashlar where she spotted something most peculiar.

In between the cracks, almost like blood vessels, a purple mist-like substance was being pumped into the bricks by much smaller vines of grey hue; her brows furrowed.

Her screams did not stop the vines, merely halt them, but she continued all the same, till they shrivelled up? Purple mist-like substance hissed out into steam as they withered.

That steam turned into shimmering water of turquoise to blue gradient and surged in to envelop the pale blonde and bubble her out of the gap.

Colwyn gracefully manoeuvred her staff, carrying everyone out of the geometric gaps and back into the chamber with bubbles of water, leaving shrivelled up and dead vines in her wake.

"SPLASH!"

Water drenched the stone as Colwyn set everyone back up onto their feet.

"DFFF!"

"FWSHP!"

As another part of the floor opened up to drop them all into it, Colwyn flourished her staff forward and collected the fallen water into a wave that surged everyone forward and prevented them from falling in.

"You dArE interrupt my feast!? TAKE of my scraps!? FIlthy ELF!" the jaw screeched out a voice unpleasant to the ears. Much of the thorned vines regained their vigour and cut themselves off from their drained parts.

"Watch your mouth pisspot," Clyde ended his sentence with a shot from his bow. "Tck!" It stabbed into the briars, but it did not exactly make the skeleton flinch.

"Oh maiden who parts the seas, I require assistance," like a wet cat, Tiffany was drenched from top to bottom making her head sway.

Colwyn flicked her staff from behind and brought it forth to swirl around, causing the water soaked into anyone to rise into the air and form into a bubble above her.

"Flamethrower!" Ben shot forth at the thorns and briars, scorching through them while drying up the moisture in the air. However much force he put into it, the flames merely turned into reddish-purplish powdery mist that got sucked up into the skull’s maw.

"The heart, get the heart," Clyde tried to hush to the others and eyed the mass of pulsing plant matter that dangled above the skeleton.

"It’s a bit hard with all the vines around it. Plus, he keeps eating our magic and throwing us all over the place," Asobi replied, her voice muted by the bright scarlet flames being hosed towards the Briar Prince.

Tiffany pinched her frizzy hair strands and pouted, "Tis him. The labyrinth itself is the Briar Prince’s true form—his veins magic, his bones brick.

One surmises we now stand in fact beneath the Ever-Labyrinth, given it’s regenerative properties," she adjusted her eyepatch.

"This guy’s the entire Gauntlet!?" Ben’s fire was slowly fizzling out.

"Makes sense, how would the guild know? They considered it old magic and left it at that, it wasn’t a threat- Stop firing! You’re going to drain yourself out!" Hotaru scolded to her side.

"Keeping him at bay," Ben justified, but his fire could barely hold up, with every joint in his arm growing limper.

"I was able to observe the prince’s renewal upon mine wreckage of his stone," Tiffany kept trying to get the curls of her locks back, but it was just falling flat in her fingers.

"This water is quite heavy," Colwyn’s eyes waned; she used slow circular movements of her staff to keep it up in the air. "And I’m getting quite tired..."

Clyde on the other hand was panting, his face now appearing more gaunt and his skin pale. Ben’s fire was going to go kaput in but a few seconds, burning whatever vines were left.

Asobi poked a wand under her chin, having stared at the ’heart’ for a while before she spoke, "I have a plan that might work." Everyone turned to her...

The flames died down and the skeleton was back in view, with renewed and strengthened vines that burst towards all of them the instant the fire disappeared. "Gratitudes for the meal," the new god’s voice grinned.

"Tide Order." "PLASH!" The bubble burst behind the five figures and surged forward in a wave towards the skeleton.

"Rejuvenate!" Hotaru casted into the shimmering turquoise wave as it rushed past her waist. The waters glowed a bluish hue and everyone caught in the wave felt a surge of energy and their mana quickly invigorate.

Colwyn crashed the wave against the thorned tendrils and Hotaru dispelled her spell in the same instant. Caught in the water, the vines had trouble moving at the speed they did.

The elven twin then twisted her staff, gathering all the vines in a thick pile and thrashing into the side of the wall where the water bashed and fell to the floor.

"Clear as much vines as you can!" Ben ordered and used his blades ignited in flame to sear through the dense pack of wet tendrils. He pointed with his blade towards the hanging mass of plant matter, "Get me a clear shot to the heart!"

Shifting walls were ruptured by sonic screams and thrashing thorns were broken by fire and light. Colwyn stood her ground while Asobi, Tiffany and Ben circled around her in protection, while she used the water to not only drain vines, but impeded and control their movement.

Hotaru concentrated from behind and created a halo of rain from the ceiling above the four of them. Rejuvenation rained onto them, keeping them sustained for the time being.

Each thrashing vine was replaced by another in an instant, faster and faster each time. And each time, Ben noticed the vines unravelled more and more around the heart above, "Faster! Cut down more of them!" he yelled.

Colwyn grunted and lifted her staff up above her, draining the thorns and tendrils. More water was thrashed around into large bubbles that defended the others around her.

Hotaru’s ears fell and her head swayed from one side to the other. The dizzy feeling was only aided by the forming nausea before she collapsed onto the floor. The colour of her skin and hair grew paler and she closed her eyes.

The rejuvenation rain disappeared while Asobi and Ben desperately tried to clear the vines as fast as they could. "I don’t feel so good," the magician whined.

Tiffany held the side of her head and stood close to Colwyn; the pale blonde no longer screamed and kept an eye on the ’heart’ above.

Ben hiccupped and looked at the mass of plant matter; the vines unravelled, then unravelled and unravelled till... A bulbous yellow spot became exposed, "NOW!" he shouted out and shot a torrent of scarlet flame at the ’heart’.

"Haha, HAHAHA-HaHaAHHAHAHaaha," the voice laughed as the flames were simply absorbed by the skull. "Every writhing attempt only makes the flavour more unique," his grating voice laughed.

"Got you," from an invisible form, an arrow fired from the corner of the chamber and flew towards the heart through Ben’s flame.

"AHHH!" Following her cue, Tiffany screamed behind the arrow’s trajectory, further boosting it forward at the speed of a bullet. The pale blonde’s knees promptly gave out and she was forced onto the floor.

Ben’s flame fizzled out, with some of it trailing the feathers of Clyde’s arrow as it shot past...

"Shtck! Tfng."

The voice that laughed around them gasped. Its breath hitched. The arrow was stuck in the ceiling in the other corner of the room, leaving a gash through the yellow bulb that was exposed.

Yellowish slime-like liquid dripped and then gushed out, followed by a dark red fluid. The vines desperately tried to patch up and hold the wound shut.

However they were drained tendril by tendril by Colwyn still standing stable in the centre. Asobi sat down, cross-legged and hunched over while Clyde collapsed onto the floor, no longer invisible.

Ben circled his swords around and blasted, "Maximum Ignitia!" a bubble of fire bloomed and blasted whatever vines surrounded the area away from the skull’s vicinity.

The liquid continued to pore as the ’heart’ wilted, diminishing in size with every pulse till it was a husk of plant matter that limply hung from the ceiling.

"Clang!" Ben fell to the ground and held his upper half up by striking his sword into the brick.

All the thorns and tendrils wilted, dying out and turning into grey stone-like material that crumbled into dust. The ’heart’ began to decay into the same ashlar stone, as if it was being encased by it.

The briars below encased the unmoving skeleton as it no longer absorbed the powdery form of mana. Hotaru opened her eyes, followed by Clyde to watch the Briar Prince ’die’.

Tiffany, Ben and Asobi caught their breaths while Colwyn flopped onto the floor, her staff thudding against the stone. She closed her eyes and went unconscious.

"Splash!" Water came falling down bubble after bubble and drenched the floors. Using some of the water, Hotaru splashed it onto her face, "Rejuvenate." However, the glow was too little and it barely even gave refreshment—the nausea did not subside.

"Ha... How puzzling, how infuriating," the voice they were all sick of hearing returned to whisper against their ears.

"Dude," Ben rasped. "You’re dead, give up."

The voice hummed croakily. "One is very much alive and can never find true death. Such is the curse of my love who bound me in thorns. One returns evermore, given a year, a decade or even more."

"Rhyming more with more isn’t very clever," Asobi spoke to the chamber.

The voice snarled and growled, before whining like a child, "This feast is rUiNeD! Ruined by unruly game!"

Everyone squinted and Tiffany shut her ears.

"Be gone! GET OUT!"

The floor shifted and threw them into the wall. Ben braced himself up and Tiffany cleared her throat to break their incoming obstacle, but the wall opened up and threw them in.

Their limp bodies flew like ragdolls, thrown around the same way they got in and were dumped into an alcove within a large cave. Groaning and grunting, they glanced up to see torchlight and hear rushing footsteps.

They were all however, at the feet of someone with a dark green lizard-like tail that whipped to one side. The figure turned and with her piercing light green eyes framed in black and green eyeliner peered down.

"Hmh. Uninvited houseguests," Feather said as she placed her sharp nails to her chin.